Karu never visited, though a few nights I swear I saw a red glow hover in the dim hallway outside. She'd not spoken to anyone since New Eden as far as I could tell, and I had to wonder how much of that was anger at me for choosing AEGIS, anger at me for leaving her, or anger at me for dropping the entire assassination of Blackett on her lap.

So in short, I thought she was angry at me, with a truckload of good reasons for it.

Lia came by all the time, looking out for me even against my wishes whenever she came by. We were only in this hospital in the first place because of her, apparently. Once I'd been stabilized, she had us transferred to Las Vegas so she could begin going through AEGIS' things at their apartment and try to produce another backup.

She brought Chiho a couple times, which was a surprise. I'd only met the girl a bit while I was in convalescence after thinking Saga had died, but she had seemed nice, emotionally sensitive...and a little dim, I guess. She'd made very pleasant small talk on her first visit, which I had no interest in...and her second visit, she brought her girlfriend for some reason, and the two of them spent the whole time arguing in the hallway once said girlfriend recognized me as an Exhuman from the news.

The P-Force hadn't been to visit since the first day I was awake. New Eden and the XPCA were both a shitshow at the moment, and apparently it was all the P-Force could to to keep the residents in line, and even have it out with a few agitated residents who decided confinement was no longer for them. Somehow, they had the support of the former-resistance, and most of the problems were coming from the un-redeveloped.

It was almost like those who were willing to fight to preserve the idea of New Eden and those who caused trouble were distinct groups even without Soran and TARGA in there fucking everything up.

I'd expected a tribunal or something for my actions but somehow that never came to pass. A new director was selected; Director Hall. Blackett's death was chalked up as just another casualty in the unfortunate violent rebellion in New Eden, where it was proclaimed that the resistance, though successful in causing many deaths and damage to instrumental XPCA facilities, was ultimately routed and those responsible were apprehended and sentenced accordingly.

No mention of Skyweb firing, even. Just lies and propaganda. Like always.

So shit was broken, and I didn't have time to sit around, Cosette told me exactly those words, paid up for getting me in a regenerator and back into action.

The new Director didn't seem to share Blackett's vision of the P-Force growing and standing as a bastion against Exhumanity, though he'd have to be truly stupid to not appreciate our abilities and the fact that we alone could cut through a Ramanathan Window's period of invulnerability. Instead of the P-Force going out on high-publicity runs, we were being lumped in with hunters and shadow ops and being sent on raids in small teams.

The second such raid I was sent on, it was just Moon and me, Tower having already been off on assignment elsewhere, and Cosette reusing her new favorite line of shit was broken and Moon also not having time to sit around. We were trying to break into a place where there were allegedly a couple of Exhumans who'd escaped from New Eden in the mess...a pretty common mission apparently.

I'd left Moon's body somewhere safe and she was ghosting me, making for a very awkward elevator ride up the building which had already been evacuated of civilians.

"So how's it going?" I asked her as she stood half-inside me, watching the numbers slowly ascend on the elevator's holo.

"You will have to be more specific. There are a great number of 'its' around us."

"How are you doing, since the events of New Eden?"

"I am fit for service."

I sighed. "I meant, I haven't had a chance to talk to you since the whole thing with Soran. You've got a bunch of his memories bouncing around in your head, right? And New Eden itself was...traumatic enough already."

"I fail to see why I should respond conversationally. I am fit for service."

"Moon, come on. I'm your superior, if something is going on with you, I'd rather hear it now than when something goes wrong." It was a half-lie, I knew that. I just wanted to know how she was doing, and if I had to leverage my position over her...well, she shouldn't be so difficult to talk to in the first place.

She didn't answer at first, as I expected.

"You have me at quite the dilemma, I confess," she said at last. "Because I know that you are lying, but I would not be able to tell if I were not in your mind, and I cannot act on that information without violating my personal beliefs. So I am faced with compromising my values, or encouraging your lies."

"Yeah, quite a mess, huh? Probably would be easier if you just answered a damn question every once in awhile."

She turned and looked at me, my own smokey purple reflection in the small elevator.

"I don't believe I'm saying this, but I think you are right," she said.

I blinked at her, incredulous. "Really?"

"Perhaps. Between the options of answering a personal question, lies, or morals, it does seem the simplest option."

"Wow. So uh...how are you, then?"

"I am fit for service," she said with a vague hint of a smile. The door to the elevator opened before I could bang my head against it in frustration.

"You know, I wasn't really lying," I explained as I navigated us down a hallway, apartment doors along both sides. "If I just trust you to self-diagnose your status, plenty of things could be wrong with you before I hear about it."

"A fair point."

"So?"

She lapsed into silence while I checked my holo and confirmed the apartment number. Couldn't really be anywhere else, there was music playing from inside and the rest of the building was evacuated for the potentially impending event. Not that there should be one...the residents here had volunteered to move to New Eden before...but that was before they knew what awaited them there.

So, I knocked. Banged, really, over the music.

"I am not sleeping well with the memories implanted, but otherwise not suffering," Moon said finally. "I also...am sorry for AEGIS. She seemed to be a good person, and never once bothered me. I do not think she deserved to die."

I had time to glimpse just a hint of a troubled expression on her face before the door opened.

"He-ee-ey, Lightning," said a man I recognized from somewhere who immediately pulled me out of the hallway to wrap me in a hug. Not exactly the reception I expected, and I was glad my shield didn't blast him on the spot. When he let me go and took a step back, I took a good look at his face and tried to place him.

"Who is it?" I heard a woman's voice from the back over another couple laughing and talking. The music stopped.

"It's our boy Lightning!" the man shouted over his shoulder. "Hey man, what brings you here? You live in the area or something? And what's with the uniform? And the...friend?" He laughed.

I was able to place the woman's voice. Trish, the shadow Exhuman who'd begrudgingly helped us in New Eden...after I kicked her butt in the arena. Which meant this guy…

I took a hard look at his face and realized, yeah, if you replaced the warm smirk with a hard scowl, this was Trish's boyfriend. Stretchy arm guy, or whatever the hell else his powers did. I was shocked, frankly, to see him so welcoming and happy to see me.

"Uh, just...just looking into Exhumans from New Eden," I said, feeling kind of stupid.

"We are here to apprehend you. Surrender and come quietly or we will engage with force," Moon said decisively.

"Moon, cut it out," I said. "We're here to talk."

"We are not here to talk, they are fugitives to be apprehended."

"Are you...okay?" the man asked. Trish appeared from a back room and joined us at the door, wrapping her arms over the man's shoulders and beaming at us.

"Hi, Lightning! So glad to see you made it out in one piece too. Or two pieces?" she asked, looking at my shadow.

"Hi Trish. You guys seem...happy. Weirdly so."

"We are," she said. "We finally decided to get married, after four years. Just a couple of days ago!" She held up her left hand where a delicate ring glittered with a few small stones.

"Wow, really? Uh, congrats." I was having a hard time relating these two saccerine lovebirds with the two I'd met in New Eden. Like, I know people had been going on about how something there was making people angry all the time, but I hadn't expected exactly this kind of...turnabout. At the very least, I guess it was a relief that the effects of the place didn't carry over out here?

But all of this was just making my job harder. I was, as Moon was bluntly putting it, supposed to be arresting these two to take back.

Which was made even harder as they invited me in, sat me down at a table, and offered me a drink, which I managed to refuse. Both of them sat with me and spoke with me like my visit was the most natural thing in the world.

They were excited to talk about the engagement, it seemed, and launched into a collaborative tale of how it went down. Nothing too fancy, just a picnic date with just the two of them, and then suddenly all of their friends and family randomly happening by and joining them until Trish was laughing at the implausibility of it all. When she started asking them all what was really going on, why they were all just in the park at the same time, he got on one knee and showed her.

Never mind that all of their friends and family was like, four people--it was so sickeningly sweet I couldn't help but to smile along, filing away mental notes for Lia and AEGIS, who both adored relationship crap like that.

And then I remembered that AEGIS was dead, and the story suddenly seemed a lot more sad.

"Don't you get embarrassed telling that same story over and over?" Trish laughed at her fiance, though it looked like she was the only one blushing.

"I'd only be embarrassed if you said no," he smiled back.

"Oh, like I'd do that."

Moon cleared her throat, but I suppose the story had some effect on even her because she'd stepped back from threatening to attack on the spot.

"Right, we're sorry for monopolizing the conversation," he said. "What was it you were here--Haley, come here and meet...um...our guest. Where's Glenn?"

A skinny dark-haired girl who wouldn't have looked out of place as Lia's classmate had emerged from the back room and was stalking past the table towards the kitchen.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

"Right where you left him, Gil," the girl said, completely undeterred as she went to the fridge and pulled out a plastic bottle of soda.

"Not before lunch, young lady," Trish barked. Haley blew her bangs out of her face in irritation and then, to my utter surprise, threw the bottle straight at the wall to the back room, where it disappeared the second it left her hands.

Trish was right there with a short rod made of shadows and, swatting at nothing she knocked the bottle out of the air...or wherever it was, sending it rolling across the ground.

Before it could reach Haley's feet, Gil--since that was his name apparently--shot an arm across the room and snatched the bottle from the ground.

"No powers inside the house," Trish hissed at the girl. "And in front of a guest? He's wearing an XPCA uniform for God's sake, child!"

"And...who...is this?" I asked, trying to remain composed at the minor triple Exhuman event unfolding in front of me.

"Haley, go get Glenn and both of you meet our guest. And no soda before lunch. Come on. Hustle your buns."

In a manner in which no buns were hustled whatsoever, the teenage girl sauntered into the back room and came back with a younger preteen boy wearing a bright yellow shirt and short messy hair. If it weren't for the fact that none of them looked remotely related, I'd think they were a family.

"These are...our wards," Trish explained. "Kids from New Eden who had nobody to look after them. So we took them in. Say hello to Glenn and Haley. Guys, meet...uh...Lightning. Sorry, what is your actual name?"

"I'm Athan. This is Kaori."

"Moon," she stated.

"Or Moon, I guess," I shrugged. "Nice to meet you guys."

"Are you an XPCA?" Glenn asked awkwardly.

"I was going to ask about the uniform," Trish mused. "He can't be, though. Or if he was, he's the worst XPCA I've ever heard of," she laughed.

"Uh, actually...I kind of am. Sorry." I wasn't sure why I was apologizing.

"Oh." She blinked at me. "Sorry."

"We're here to take you back to New Eden," Moon clarified helpfully.

"Are we though?" I asked her.

"I apologize. Was there a second, secret mission briefing to which I was not invited?" Moon asked, turning on me.

"No," I said. "I just...it doesn't look like we should be forcing people to move back just because some mission says so. I mean, look at them. They seem happy here."

"Happy, yes. Also very dangerous. In the time we have been here, I have already seen gross misuse of powers."

"How can you quantify stopping a girl from drinking soda before lunch as gross misuse?"

"Perhaps," interjected Gil. "We should just have the adults in this conversation after all."

"Fine," Haley said. "Glenn, shoo. We're talking." And then she sat down at the table with us, ignoring the glares of her parents.

"Haley, into the back too," Gil said, his voice taking on a serious tone.

"I'm totally an adult," she argued back, her voice instantly defensive.

"Do you work? Do you pay rent? No? Get outta here, kid." He reached around the table and spun her chair around under her to dump her onto her feet.

"You're such a bitch, Gil," Haley said with another blow into her bangs before she stalked off and slammed the door.

"Sorry about that," Trish said into the awkward silence that followed. "She lost her parents in her Exhuman event, and…"

"I get it, no need to apologize. You guys are really great for taking them in."

"Well...we Exhumans need to stick together, right? Nobody else would take her in if they knew she had powers. They'd just be worried she would throw them into the sun or something, but she's really a good girl. Tries hard in school. Has a few friends, hides her powers."

"But not in front of me?"

Trish laughed. "Well, she's not perfect. I imagine that whole bit was to show off in front of you. Or make us look stupid in front of guests. Teenagers."

"So she was throwing a bottle of soda into the sun?"

"No...just into the bedroom I think. She can sort of vanish things she touches and have them reappear later. If they were moving at the time, they just keep moving."

"Anyway," Moon interjected. "We are not here to do power analysis. We are a strike team, not a recon team."

"Yes, you mentioned that," Gil said, frowning. "As for New Eden," he glanced at his fiance "we're not going back."

"We have orders--" Moon started.

"Moon, come on," I said, turning to her. "Look into my memories, and see how miserable and angry Trish and Gil were when I knew them in there. It's only a few weeks later and they're...hell, they're the model of reformed Exhumans."

"Yes. Suspiciously so."

"Oh come on. You think they're doing all this as an act on the off chance that someone comes by to take them back but has a change of heart?"

"I don't think a teenage daughter would be worth it just for that," Trish laughed.

"Well, it's working isn't it?" Moon said, crossing her arms.

"Moon, how can you be so smart but also so stupid?" I asked.

I was in the same spot I'd put her in before. I could sense she wasn't being honest with me, but if I called her out on it, I'd make it obvious I was peeking. She wasn't actually thinking these guys were any threat, but she wasn't mentally okay either, and I think rigid, almost malicious adherence to authority was just her way of lashing out. Like when she gave me an infinitely hard time for not speaking to her exactly properly.

But she could be a shit to me all day and that was whatever. She wasn't going to force me to bring innocent Exhumans in just because the rules said so.

"Papa-Foxtrot Central, do you copy?" I asked my comms. No response. "Cosette? Yo?" We did have a support team out there, but this was probably hardly the op which currently needed attention.

"Central here," an unrecognised voice said after a pause.

"Where's Major Dawn?"

"Currently advising a different strike unit."

"Can you get her on the line when she has a moment?"

"Yes sir."

I looked at Gil and Trish just sitting there in awkward silence while I yelled into comms and Moon and I bickered in their living room and was a little disgusted with myself for how I was handling this. I definitely felt a few steps off of normal...like Moon, I was probably behaving a little weird and didn't even notice.

"I'm sorry," I said to them. "Look...Moon's correct in our initial mission in deploying here--"

"Haley and Glenn should not grow up there," Trish said, glaring me down and slamming the table, and for a second I saw the woman I recognized from New Eden. Still a fighter, deep down. "There's something wrong with that place, it twists people, and if you try to make us go...we'll fight you if we have to."

"Easy," I said. "As I was saying, that was why we were sent here, but I think that's stupid. I agree with you, I've seen what you've seen and I've seen how much worse you guys were in there, how much worse everyone was. Now...I'm going to have to give the guys back there something or else they'll just send out another team...so would you be willing to submit to XPCA surveillance on your family?"

"No," she said without hesitation. "Would you let the XPCA spy on your family?"

"If it meant staying out of New Eden, yes. Look, we've got satellites and recon teams and cameras up everywhere anyway--"

"You have cameras in our apartment?" Gil asked, shocked.

"No...but--"

"Look, Lightning. Or, Athan, you said. We're not going to hurt anyone, nobody knows about our powers. Just leave us alone, that's all we want."

"Believe me, that's what I want to do more than anything. But that's not how the XPCA works, and that's not how the world works."

They looked at me for a long moment which gave me time to hate the words coming out of me. Eventually Gil spoke. "Yeah, I know."

I didn't know what I could say or do or offer them. I knew they were right, that New Eden was a shit place for a family...a shit place for an Exhuman in general. I knew if those kids were to have any chance of becoming real people, this was their best shot. But I also knew that people just hated Exhumans.

After being in New Eden, I just...irrationally, I guess...I felt like all of this would change. I'd been around Exhumans enough that they felt normal, not novel, and somehow the rest of the world would see that too. We'd brought down the corrupt heart in the XPCA. We'd bled and sacrificed and AEGIS was dead. And still, this?

"Papa-Foxtrot Actual, this is Papa-Foxtrot Central, go ahead," my comms came to life.

"Cosette, hi," I said, tapping my comms for the benefit of the others in the room.

"Hi Chariot. We have kind of an event unfolding near Santa Fe right now so if you could be brief."

"Right," I said. "Well, uh…" I blinked at the two sitting opposite me and stood up to move slightly out of earshot, feeling like I needed to pace anxiously and channel my inner Lia. Still, as I moved from the table to the sofas, their eyes followed me, and I realized that was what I was trying to get away from.

"Today, Chariot?" Cosette fumed.

"Right, right. Right." I leaned against a wall near the bedroom door, and could sense on the other side of it two small bodies pressed against the door, listening, hardly breathing. "Um, Cosette, Moon and I made it on-location but it seems like our intel was bad. There's just a normal family of four living here."

"Great, another one. Jack and Tower keep running into those too...recon teams are really dropping the ball," Cosette sighed. "I know they're working overtime on acquisition, but it'd save us so much goddamn time if they could check their damn targets. Recon my ass." She muttered herself into irritated silence. "Well, don't stop for souvenirs or anything, there's plenty more Exhumans to catch."

"Right," I said, and realized I needed to stop saying that word so much. "Uh, affirmative. Moon and I will be returning for redeployment."

"Thanks. Papa-Foxtrot Central over and out."

We escaped a few minutes into a wave of gratitude being poured over us, in the midst of which I made them promise never to use their powers period, and explained if another team came out, I wouldn't be able to help. They had to stay low or they'd be in New Eden. Or dead.

And then we were back in the slow, small elevator heading down.

"Why didn't you rat me out to Cosette?" I asked Moon.

She was silent for a moment in which I reflected on my sentence to see if it had any faults in it. None that I could detect, and none she could either apparently, because she responded after a few floors of deliberation.

"I don't know," she said, with a hint of frustration. "They were escaped fugitives and we are officers of the law. It seems very straightforward."

"Is it because they're not bad guys?"

"They broke the law. They agreed to relocation and then violated their agreement. Exhuman nature aside, they are still criminals."

"But they're not bad guys."

She didn't argue, which was the same thing as agreement, I thought. But then she spoke up again, without me even having to drag it out of her, which was a surprise.

"We uphold the law, but sometimes, I am not certain that makes us the good guys," she said with obvious frustration. "I wish this world were not so fundamentally broken."

"Yeah, it sucks when things can't just be put into good and bad," I agreed. She looked at me like she thought I might be mocking her and wasn't sure, but I'm pretty confident she peeked and got her answer that way as she just slowly nodded.

"Because I am apparently already having an emotional outpouring of a day," she said, referencing her comments about AEGIS earlier "I may as well embarrass myself one more time. And you, if you have any humility."

"Embarrass...me?" I peeked just a little on accident. "You want to compliment me?"

"I could not, if you prefer."

"No...don't do that," I laughed. She waited for me to stop with no small amount of resentment.

"I am...glad...that you continue to do what you think is good, even in opposition to law and conventional wisdom. Your morals...give me hope."

"Mine? My morals are nothing. I'm just a pawn on a very, very strange chessboard."

"You are a pawn that remains white when both sides appear grey. You refuse to be captured no matter how many stronger pieces enter your square. And bit-by-bit, you drag the pieces around you towards your side."

"Are you on my side?" I asked, half to push my luck, and half because I was, as she mentioned earlier, reasonably embarrassed by this blatant, shameless praise.

She went silent again as we left the building and entered the XPCA truck where her body was belted into the benches on the back.

"I am on nobody's side," she said as I reached for her body, making me hesitate. "You know, I believe I may only be so complimentary because of elevated hormones. I am close to menstruation. If you were interested in a consequence-free tryst, it should be a safe day for me."

Why did I ever listen to her? I poked her in the forehead and her consciousness and thoughts left my mind, as thoughts like what the heck is wrong with this girl bubbled up in their place.

Her eyes popped open and she shot me a small smile as she fixed her hair. "Joudan."

"I know," I said, and banged on the back of the driver's compartment and buckled myself in opposite her. "I was just being annoyed at how fast you can whiplash around from impossible to serious to joking. If you can even call it that."

But even as I complained, I knew something behind her words was serious...and not the sex-offering part. I hoped.

This mission, or my actions on it, or her being in my head...or maybe just the shared conspiracy of nobody else having any idea what Soran did to us that day, somehow we'd gotten closer without either of us realizing it.

Because as we rode back to base for new orders, Moon kept that small smile, and for the first time since I met her, there was something in her eyes other than hate.